The captain laughed a great laugh, and said he might have known that wherever there was a pretty face, there was a friend to Mr. Rutledge; and Grace asked, artlessly, what made me blush so; while only good-natured Phil came to the rescue, and in his blunt, honest way, exclaimed:
"It's my opinion she's much in the right of it. I shouldn't think much of her, if she wasn't angry at hearing anybody used up so, all on suspicion, too. If there's anything against him, why, hang it, come out and say so; but this making a man out a rascal, because people like him and because he's got a fortune, upon my soul, I think it's a scurvy sort of trick, that I do."
"Don't hit him any more—he's got friends," whined Grace.
"Phil quite mistakes us if he thinks we are not all Mr. Rutledge's friends," said Mrs. Churchill. "No one dreamed of saying anything that could possibly be considered uncomplimentary."
"I don't know, Aunt Edith," said Phil, rather warmly; "but I hope you don't pay me that sort of compliment when I'm not by."
"Indeed we don't," exclaimed Josephine, laughing. "When you're absent, Phil (which isn't often, you know), we all say you're the best fellow in the world, and count the hours till you come back."
"Then I think the best thing I can do is to stay away," he answered, with a sort of sigh.
"Ah, Phil, I know you wouldn't have the heart!" said Josephine, in a low tone, with a bright flash of her coquettish eye; which had the effect of subduing her cousin for the rest of the evening, and keeping him obedient to her slightest whim.
Though the rest of the family seemed to forget very soon the little episode that had been so excruciating to me, and so amusing to them, I do not think it was lost upon my aunt. I always found her looking at me very narrowly whenever Mr. Rutledge was mentioned, and she on more than one occasion, in my presence, took pains to speak of him in a way that seemed to put a greater distance than ever between us, of his age, his eccentricities, his reserve. My aunt might have saved herself the trouble. I "knew my place" by this time, and shrunk as naturally from meeting him now, as I had before been eager and forward. On the one or two occasions when I could not avoid encountering him, it had been in her presence, and I had been shy and cold to a degree that must have been unaccountable to him, if he had given the matter a thought, which I very much doubted. I had excused myself as hurriedly as possible, and slipped back to the study, glad to be by myself again, yet bitterly sorry, as soon as it was too late, that I had not staid where only I wished to be—where only I found any pleasure, if such a doubtful emotion indeed could be called pleasure. It was the nearest approach to it, however, that my life presented; it was what I looked forward to, spite of my good resolves from day to day; yet, when the wished-for pleasure came, with strange shyness and perverseness, I thrust it away out of my own reach, then cried passionately at the disappointment, and began to hope again. The most inexplicable and contradictory thing in all this world of contradictions, is a woman's heart, before experience has tutored it. The woman herself does not understand it. What wonder if its strange willfulness and sudden impulses hopelessly bewilder and mislead the one of all others whom she most desires to please, and for whom alone, if the truth were known, the foolish heart throbs and flutters and pines.